Stratus Technologies Inc. is expanding its line of fault-tolerant servers running standard Linux with the unveiling today of the ftServer T60.
The server, which will be powered by up to four single-core Intel Corp. Xeon chips, will run Red Hat Inc.s Enterprise Linux AS operating system. Stratus three years ago first put its own variant of Linux on its fault-tolerant systems, which offer replicated components working in lockstep to avoid single points of failure. The company has since released two dual-processor systems—one for the telecommunications industry—running Red Hat Linux hardened for its systems.
“We did all the hardening and fault-tolerant work to it,” said Denny Lane, director of product marketing for the Maynard, Mass., company. “It did well in the market, but was very limited in scope.”
Stratus has been working with Red Hat to harden its standard Linux OS to enable it to run on the fault-tolerant systems, which Stratus calls its Continuous Processing technology.
The company already has two versions of the two-way T30 server—one for mainstream use, the other targeted at the telecommunications industry—that can run Red Hat-certified applications. The T60 is aimed at high-end tasks, such as large databases, Lane said.
Stratus also has a large installed base of customers running HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard Co.s Unix OS, on its legacy VSeries systems. The T60 will enable them to migrate more easily to Linux running on Intel-based systems.
The TSeries also gives Stratus a range of systems running a variety of operating systems, including servers that run Microsoft Corp.s Windows Server 2003 and its own VOS.
The T60 will ship at the end of the month. All of Stratus TSeries systems are offered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 update 2, based on the 2.6 kernel.
